The landscape of comedy was different when Richard Lewis started performing at clubs in the 1970s. 'It was scary,' he says. 'There weren't that many of us.'

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As a kid in Englewood, Richard Lewis always felt he had to prove himself in the face of disapproving parents.

"I didn't have a good upbringing," he says. "I still feel that cloak of adolescence, of being wrong. That's a terrible way to grow up."

Some boys, faced with that childhood, might become fighters or trouble-makers. Lewis found escape in another way: laughter. "I was the class clown," he says. "I needed it for the attention, for the accolades." ...